Sergey Schepkin

Sergey Schepkin (born September 24, 1962) is an American pianist of Russian birth. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Performer

Schepkin was born in St. Petersburg. He started playing piano at the age of five under the tutelage of Leah Zelikhman, and studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexandra Zhukovsky (a pupil of Sergei Tarnowsky), Grigory Sokolov, and Alexander Ikharev, graduating summa cum laude in 1985. He gave his first full-length piano recital in 1978, and made his orchestral debut with the Saint Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Vladislav Chernushenko in 1984. After his permanent move to the United States in 1990, he studied with Russell Sherman at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he earned an Artist Diploma in 1992 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1999. He also coached with Paul Doguereau in 1994–98. He made his Carnegie Hall recital debut in 1993 (at Weill Recital Hall), and has performed as soloist and chamber player throughout the world. He has appeared at the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Celebrity Series of Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Boston's Gardner Museum and Emmanuel Music, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, LACMA and Maestro Foundation [1] series in Los Angeles, Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, as well as Grand and Chamber Halls of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, among many other venues and series. He has performed under the baton of Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Karsten Andersen, Keith Lockhart, Jonathan McPhee, Klauspeter Seibel, and Vassily Sinaisky. His concerts and recordings have been reviewed by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Asahi Shimbun, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, Fanfare, American Record Guide, Musicweb-International, and other publications. Sergey Schepkin is a Steinway Artist.

Educator

Schepkin is also active as an educator. He served on the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1988–90 (where he also was Professor Ekaterina Murina's assistant in 1987-89), and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa in 1997–98. Since 2003, he has served as an Associate Professor of Piano at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; he taught at The Boston Conservatory in 2006-07; in 2011, he was appointed as a Visiting Associate Professor at Boston University, where he taught until 2013. He has been on the New England Conservatory Preparatory and Continuing Education piano faculty since 1993. He has presented lecture-recitals and master classes at New England Conservatory, UCLA, San Francisco Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, M.I.T., Longy School of Music, Duquesne University, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Norwegian Academy of Music, and other schools.

Prizes, awards, grants, and nominations

• Steinway Artist as of October 2009
• The 2003 Maestro Foundation Grant
• Top choice of a Bach Well-Tempered Clavier I recording, International Piano, Winter 2001
• Best recordings of 1999 and 2000, The Boston Globe (Bach Well-Tempered Clavier I and II),
• First Prize and Chopin Prize, the 1999 New Orleans International Piano Competition
• The Gunther Schuller Medal, New England Conservatory, June 1999
• The 1994, 1995, and 1999 St. Botolph Club Foundation Grants
• The 1994 and 1999 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Award
• Indie Award nominations, 1997 and 1998 (Bach Partitas recordings)
• The 1996 Samuel Chester Award
• The 1996 Top Five Want List, Fanfare magazine (for the 1995 Bach Goldberg Variations recording)
• The 1993 Harvard Musical Association Arthur Foote Award
• The 1992 Theodore Presser Foundation Award
• The 1990 Perot Foundation Grant
• Third Prize, the 1988 Queen Sonja International Music Competition, Oslo
• Best Collaborative Pianist Diploma, the 1987 Markneukirchen International Instrumental Competition, Markneukirchen, Germany
• Second Prize, the 1985 All-Russia Piano Competition, Ufa, Russia
• First Prize, the 1978 Concertino-Praga International Competition for Young Musicians, Prague

Discography

• Bach: The Six French Suites; Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue; Fantasia and Fugue in A minor, BWV 904 (Steinway & Sons, 2014)
• Schumann: Liederkreis (Kerner Lieder; Lenau Lieder and Requiem; Eichendorff Liederkreis), with Darren Chase, baritone (Arabesque Recordings, 2013)
• Brahms: Late Piano Works (King International, Inc., Japan, 2011)
• Bach: Goldberg Variations (2008 recording; King International, Inc., Japan, 2010)
• Bach: Capriccio in B-flat, Partita No. 6, The Italian Concerto (Northern Flowers/St. Petersburg Musical Archive, Russia, 2007)
• Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition; Rachmaninoff: Seven Preludes (Northern Flowers/St. Petersburg Musical Archive, Russia, 2006)
• Debussy: Preludes I, Images I, Masques, D’un cahier d’esquisses, L’isle joyeuse (Centaur Records, 2003)
• Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier II (Ongaku, 2000)
• Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier I (Ongaku, 1999)
• Schnittke: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, with Joanna Kurkowicz, violin (Bridge Records, Inc., 1999)
• Bach: The Six Partitas, Volume II: Partitas V and VI, Four Duets, Overture in the French Style (Ongaku, 1997)
• Bach: The Six Partitas, Volume I: Partitas I-IV (Ongaku, 1996, re-released in Japan by Dear Heart, Inc., 2008)
• Bach: The Goldberg Variations (1995 recording; released by Ongaku, 1995; re-released in Japan by Dear Heart, Inc., 2008)
• Winners of the 1988 Queen Sonja International Music Competition, Oslo (Simax, 1989)

External links

• Sergey Schepkin website: www.schepkin.com [2]